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Fencer Intel
medium 5.3

CVE-2026-42772 json

Potential CPU DoS via O(n^2) Fragment Reassembly in QUIC

published last mo. modified last mo. also EUVD-2026-89003

cvss
5.3
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.5%
EPSS 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 42%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Issue summary: The QUIC stream reassembly algorithm performance deteriorates progressively as packets are arriving out of order. The worst case has a quadratic complexity proportional to the number of stream frames kept in the buffer for the received stream data.

Impact summary: A remote QUIC peer that completes the handshake can create a connection-scoped CPU pressure and potentially a Denial of Service using compliant STREAM frames inside the advertised receive window, with low attacker bandwidth.

CWE: CWE-407: Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity

Description: OpenSSL manages received QUIC stream fragments using a doubly-linked list. While it optimizes for append operations (at the end of the list), it falls back to a head-to-tail linear search for any fragment that does not immediately follow the current `tail`.

By manipulating the sequence of offsets, an attacker can force the server to perform O(n^2) operations, consuming excessive CPU time for the QUIC process.

FIPS impact: no The FIPS module is not affected as the QUIC implementation is outside of the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary.

Patch / fix

  • OpenSSL OpenSSL 3.4.8, 3.5.9, 3.6.5, 4.0.3
  • openssl Debian 13 3.5.7-1~deb13u3
  • openssl Debian 14 3.6.5-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-42772

  • openssl Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 3.5.5-1ubuntu3.7

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-42772

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • openssl3 hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl3-libs hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl3-devel-engine hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl-libs hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl-perl hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl-config-fips hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1
  • openssl-devel-engine hummingbird 1 3.5.9-0.1.hum1

red hat advisories RHSA-2026:74166RHSA-2026:74162

  • openssl Azure Linux 3.0 3.3.7-7

azure linux advisories AZL-105579

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-42772 updated cvss 5.3

openssl: openssl: Denial of Service via inefficient QUIC stream reassembly

  • Red Hat Developer Hub 1 rhdh/rhdh-hub-rhel9 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 openssl, shim-x64, shim-aa64, openssl-libs, openssl-perl, compat-openssl11, +5 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 shim 16.1-4.el10, openssl 3.5.8-1.el10_2, edk2 20260221-7.el10_3.1, shim-unsigned-x64 16.1-1.el10, shim-unsigned-aarch64 16.1-2.el10 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat Satellite 6 puppet-agent, openvox-agent 8.28.1-1.el9sat
    affected: workaround, no fix available “If QUIC is not required, disable it in the application or reverse proxy. Restrict untrusted QUIC/UDP peers able to complete a handshake.”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 edk2-ovmf, edk2-tools, edk2-aarch64, edk2 20260221-7.el10_3.1 Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-core-bff-rhel9, rhoai/odh-dashboard-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-maas-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-automl-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-gen-ai-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mod-arch-mlflow-rhel9, +6 more
    under investigation
  • Red Hat Hardened Images openssl 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, openssl3 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, openssl-libs 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, openssl-perl 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, openssl3-libs 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, openssl-config-fips 3.5.9-0.1.hum1, +3 more
    fixed: vendor fix “If QUIC is not required, disable it in the application or reverse proxy. Restrict untrusted QUIC/UDP peers able to complete a handshake.” RHSA-2026:74162
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 openssl, openssl-perl, openssl 3.5.8-1.el10_2 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 ovmf, OVMF, shim, AAVMF, mokutil, openssl, +6 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 openssl, shim-x64, edk2-ovmf, shim-aa64, shim-ia32, edk2-aarch64, +13 more Red Hat Hardened Images unbound 1.26.1-1.hum1 Red Hat JBoss Core Services jbcs-httpd24-openssl, jbcs-httpd24-openssl-libs, jbcs-httpd24-openssl-perl Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) rhoai/odh-mlflow-rhel9, rhoai/odh-kube-rbac-proxy-rhel9, rhoai/odh-maas-controller-rhel9, rhoai/odh-mlflow-operator-rhel9, rhoai/odh-model-controller-rhel9, rhoai/odh-ogx-k8s-operator-rhel9, +14 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
last mo.

Exploit prediction

0.50% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 42% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
CNA 3.1 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Affected products

  • OpenSSL OpenSSL

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-407 Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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